Five conclusions: Abysmal performance in deserved defeat to Northampton

Penalty problems, wing-back woes and a lot for Michael Duff to ponder from a self-destructive home defeat

1. Northampton had the Terriers figured out (and Huddersfield’s performance was dreadful)

Ah, so that’s what Bolton felt like, then. As if we didn’t know already.

Just as we pointed out last week that Town were good but Bolton were dreadful, it’s only right that we start by saying that Northampton were good, having clearly done their homework, but Town were absolutely awful.

The scoreline was a fair reflection of the action, to the point that you could practically feel the hand of the football gods in ensuring Koroma’s late penalty didn’t find the back of the net.

We’re sure this is an observation we’ve made before, but Michael Duff said to us in Austria that a team is only as good as its wing-backs in his 3-5-2. To prove the point, both of them were different but ultimately equal shades of dreadful here, and the rest of the side followed suit.

Duff had remarked at his pre-match press conference that his regular midfield three could smell the fact that Herbie Kane, David Kasumu and Joe Hodge were coming back from absence, and had raised their games accordingly. He got no such response here, despite two of them being on the bench (and offering a significant improvement once they made it on the pitch).

We have sung Koroma’s praises to high heaven this season, and defended Callum Marshall against a general feeling of disappointment among the fanbase. But Marshall offered nothing — not helped by some of the hopeless long passes aimed his way — and Koroma looked a desperate man for all but three minutes of the game, during which he scored and then won a penalty. His subsequent miss duly sent him back to square one.

The infection even spread to Lee Nicholls and Michal Helik, two of Town’s most reliable players, who uncharacteristically combined to dirty their clean sheet for the first goal. There was no need for Helik to rush into such a risky pass, and Nicholls’ panicked reaction failed to prevent an avoidable disaster.

Of the starting lineup, only Nigel Lonwijk (who was still partly culpable in the own goal) and Jonathan Hogg (who was broadly fine) emerged with any credit, with some other small positives on offer from the bench, particularly in the shape of Joe Hodge.

It was as stinky a performance as we hope to see this season, carrying none of the mitigation we’ve cited for previous defeats, like ‘there was a red card’ (which there was, but the other way) or ‘it was only the cup’.

You might generously say this is just one of those games we predicted on the podcast last week, where the high-risk strategy comes up against an opponent particularly adept at repeatedly opening it up…but coming so soon after three other poor performances and defeats, Town haven’t yet really earned that credit. Bolton is the anomaly, not this game.

Still, there was no real discernible reason why it should have been so spectacularly bad, beyond a vague sense that there were a few on that pitch who expected to turn up and win, then completely panicked when they found themselves a goal down.